20,000 + For Lancashire v Yorkshire?

"Marketing" is a term banded around as the panacea to all sorts of issues in rugby league. In reality it's a meaningless buzzword that people can hide behind as a way of avoiding giving specific and tangible ideas to improve the game.

As has been correctly pointed out, there is a genuine emotion and feeling behind the State of Origin games or behind a Wigan v Saints game. This feeling simply doesn't exist in an Exiles game or a Roses game. We could spend a lot of money trying to artificially garner these emotions from the public, but the reality is it is flogging a dead horse.

Where does the cash for prizes come from and who are the sponsors. It doesn't appear that the RFL is either awash with cash or fighting sponsors off with a stick?
You got a spare few hundred thousand?

How much cash does it dole out to the clubs? Reducing Super League to 10 clubs would be a start to moving the game on to a more sustainable footing. Better to spend the money currently wasted on Super League stragglers on the representative game and getting the viable Super League clubs on to a sustainable footings.

"Marketing" is a term banded around as the panacea to all sorts of issues in rugby league. In reality it's a meaningless buzzword that people can hide behind as a way of avoiding giving specific and tangible ideas to improve the game.

As has been correctly pointed out, there is a genuine emotion and feeling behind the State of Origin games or behind a Wigan v Saints game. This feeling simply doesn't exist in an Exiles game or a Roses game. We could spend a lot of money trying to artificially garner these emotions from the public, but the reality is it is flogging a dead horse.

Part of the problem is that it does exist but only on one side and amongst a diminishing section of those

Rugby League is a sport that desperately needs to expand its geographical supporter base and its player base. This imperative means that all other requirements are secondary until this is done.

All power in the game should be with governing bodies, especially international governing bodies.

Without these actions we will remain a minor sport internationally and nationally.

In terms of the Australian clubs you are well wide of the mark. In contrast to the petty villagism that is present in British League all but two of the founding NSWRL clubs merged or were removed from first grade competition to grow the NRL into a national and trans Tasman competition. Wests, Balmain, Norths, St George, Newton and Illawarra all got the chop. Even Souths were kicked out of the competition until they go their house in order. The whole of BRL was also downgraded into a feeder competition too. The great Brisbane clubs of old were wiped from the fully professional game.

The NRL isn't a national competition. There's no representative from Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territories or Tasmania. Were the BRL teams ever fully professional?

Well you are being very narrow minded. If the RFL had the will and dedicated the resources to it would have every chance of being a success. The point is that the last time the Roses concept was tried in the Super League era it wasn't given the chance to succeed. It wasn't given any context and it wasn't given any meaning.

The exact same could be said of any concept in Rugby League. The point you continually ignore is that it comprehensively failed when competitions didn't need to have the will and dedicated resources to succeed. Why is this?

In terms of the Australian clubs you are well wide of the mark. In contrast to the petty villagism that is present in British League all but two of the founding NSWRL clubs merged or were removed from first grade competition to grow the NRL into a national and trans Tasman competition. Wests, Balmain, Norths, St George, Newton and Illawarra all got the chop. Even Souths were kicked out of the competition until they go their house in order. The whole of BRL was also downgraded into a feeder competition too. The great Brisbane clubs of old were wiped from the fully professional game.

What utter nonsense. You cannot use the Super League War as evidence that the Australian game is forward thinking and ours isn't. They had a split for goodness sake that resulted from exactly this parochialism and eventually in a climbdown from both sides. Where are Perth Reds? Where are Adelaide Rams? Where are the South Queensland Crushers?

Souths were kicked out until they successfully sued the NRL. The BRL wasn't downgraded, it had dropped in prestige massively to the point where it wasn't a rival competition any more. It was 1987 when the last BRL player was picked for Origin, so it was hardly a brave move.

The Australian clubs are the main reason that the Kangaroos didn't play any games against us last year, they wanted a year off for their players! It's laughable to make out like they are forward thinking in comparison to us.

Meanwhile British Rugby League seems to be regressing its structure to suit the interests of Castleford, Wakefield, Featherstone, Leigh and Halifax. What a great way to grow the game.

I think there is a difference between competitive and the odd match that finishes close or goes either way. That win was their first in 10.

I think the French relationship to us is the same as our relationship to Australia. They are more interested in it than we are and until it is truly competitive the interest from the bigger partner is small.

Actually France had been quite competitive during the late eighties but you are corrrct

The exact same could be said of any concept in Rugby League. The point you continually ignore is that it comprehensively failed when competitions didn't need to have the will and dedicated resources to succeed. Why is this? What utter nonsense. You cannot use the Super League War as evidence that the Australian game is forward thinking and ours isn't. They had a split for goodness sake that resulted from exactly this parochialism and eventually in a climbdown from both sides. Where are Perth Reds? Where are Adelaide Rams? Where are the South Queensland Crushers?Souths were kicked out until they successfully sued the NRL. The BRL wasn't downgraded, it had dropped in prestige massively to the point where it wasn't a rival competition any more. It was 1987 when the last BRL player was picked for Origin, so it was hardly a brave move.The Australian clubs are the main reason that the Kangaroos didn't play any games against us last year, they wanted a year off for their players! It's laughable to make out like they are forward thinking in comparison to us. Licensing is nowhere near a good enough success to make this claim.

Well if we are dealing in absolutes you are wrong about the NSWRL. Before Super League the NSWRL had already expanded to Newcastle, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, Auckland, Gold Coast, North Queensland and South Queensland by 1996.

After the Super League War the need for the NRL to rationalise was accepted in principle by the ARL and News Corps. 7 of the traditional Sydney teams either agreed to merge or stripped of First Grade status. That was a course of action that was endorsed by the ARL and by extension its member clubs. Perth, Adelaide and South Queensland were victims of financial mismanagement and the desire for News Corps to get the Melbourne Storm in the competition more than anything. The rationalisation process affected both the ARL and Super League clubs.

Can you imagine 6 of the small heartland clubs in England agreeing to merge for the greater good? Not in a month of Sundays.

Also you are wrong about the BRL too. Up until the creation of the Broncos BRL players were still being picked for the Kangaroos in significant numbers. The creation of the Canberra Raiders, who relied heavily on BRL talent, and then the Broncos killed the BRL as a first grade competition. Within a couple of years the crowds, sponsorship and quality of the players had collapsed.

Also getting back to the original topic the NSWRL clubs also allowed the State of Origin to be created and allowed their players to be used in the games.

The Australian game and the Australian clubs have been much more dynamic and forward thinking than their British counterparts.

7 of the traditional Sydney teams either agreed to merge or stripped of First Grade status.

Can you imagine 6 of the small heartland clubs in England agreeing to merge for the greater good? Not in a month of Sundays. .

You berate the English teams for not agreeing to merge yet think the Aussie clubs are wonderful for agreeing to merge with a loaded gun at their heads! How difficult was it to agree to merge or disappear into obscurity?

You berate the English teams for not agreeing to merge yet think the Aussie clubs are wonderful for agreeing to merge with a loaded gun at their heads! How difficult was it to agree to merge or disappear into obscurity?

It was the ARL who was agreeing to the mergers and through the NSWRL the Sydney clubs. The only club that dissented was South Sydney which a basket case when it was kicked out of the competition.

Meanwhile Wests Tigers and St George Illawarra have prospered since their mergers.

In the UK merged Hull, Manchester and Wakefield/Castleford sides could have established viable clubs that could have been able to compete with the dominant teams in Super League. The failure to consolidate when Super League was founded has left British Rugby League with 5 or 6 marginal clubs in the top divsion. A massive mistake.

What was the option if the likes of Wests and Illawarra hadn't merged? They would have been kicked out of the top flight just like Norths and Newtown were. That wasn't an option given to the English teams so is it little wonder no-one took up the offer outside of bankruptcy? The Australian scenario wasn't all sweetness and light where the mergers were like a well oiled machine. They had plenty if dissenters. Souths being the highest profile. Care to remind me how Souths are doing lately.

That is great in theory but unless England are playing New Zealand or Australia there aren't any international teams that are worth playing. Wales and France just aren't strong enough and won't be for the foreseeable future.

Sure a three test series against Australia or New Zealand or a Tri Nations will capture the public imagination but in the absence of that there are a lack of meaningful representative games.

As such Yorkshire v Lancashire is probably the best option available.

Of course there is always the argument that British Rugby League doesn't need a representative game but I would disagree with that.

I took a bus full of people with no interest in rugby to see England A versus Tonga. That is not a theory. There would have been no interest in Yorkshire vs Lancashire as there was none in St Helens vs Wigan.

"Marketing" is a term banded around as the panacea to all sorts of issues in rugby league. In reality it's a meaningless buzzword that people can hide behind as a way of avoiding giving specific and tangible ideas to improve the game.

As has been correctly pointed out, there is a genuine emotion and feeling behind the State of Origin games or behind a Wigan v Saints game. This feeling simply doesn't exist in an Exiles game or a Roses game. We could spend a lot of money trying to artificially garner these emotions from the public, but the reality is it is flogging a dead horse.

Correct - people often state that the RFL don't engage in marketing - often they mean we haven't seen a TV ad.

What was the option if the likes of Wests and Illawarra hadn't merged? They would have been kicked out of the top flight just like Norths and Newtown were. That wasn't an option given to the English teams so is it little wonder no-one took up the offer outside of bankruptcy? The Australian scenario wasn't all sweetness and light where the mergers were like a well oiled machine. They had plenty if dissenters. Souths being the highest profile. Care to remind me how Souths are doing lately.

Well Norths were screwed over because they could not get their new stadium on the Central Coast built in time. They briefly merged with Manly but then preferred to be a stand alone club in the Division below.

The clubs that did merge did so with the promise of a guaranteed position in the NRL and generous funding. In terms of Souths they were a complete mess at the time and they deserved to be thrown out of the competition. They were whipping boys on the field and a shambles off it with no prospect of improvement. Being thrown out was the catalyst that led to Crowe taking them over and turning them around completely.

The Wests Tigers and St George Illawarra mergers have worked with both clubs winning Premierships recently.

To be honest with you the RFL and the top 6 or 7 clubs should present fait accompli to the rest of the game and rationalise Super League down to 10. The power in the game lies with Sky TV, the big clubs and the RFL and they should bite the bullet and get on with it.

Why weren't Manly dumped from the top flight when the merger failed? Was it because they were the money team? If Crowe hadn't rescued Souths then the most decorated team in Australian RL history may well have been consigned to the bin. Do you really believe we have 7 top teams who would remain in their position of judge, jury and hangman once the axe has been swung? Sooner or later the spotlight would turn on one of the 7. We simply don't have enough clubs of the required calibre to populate this super dooper league you crave. We have three or four, tops, and the sooner people realise that the better. Just because you're at the top now doesn't mean you'll always be at the top.

Manly and Norths fell out with each other and the Norths members voted to leave the merger. Manly had the stadium, the supporters and the money to stand alone in the NRL.

If Souths hadn't been taken over by Crowe they wouldn't have gone out of existence. The Juniors and Leagues clubs would have still survived and they would have ended up fielding a team in the NSW Cup, like Norths and Newton do now. When Souths were thrown out of the competition they had no money, few fans and a dire team. At the time they deserved to be stripped of first grade status.

In terms of Super League you are wrong about the top clubs not remaining at the top. Of the 30 finalists in the 15 Grand Finals all but two have come from St Helens, Wigan, Leeds and Bradford. One appearance by Warrington and one appearance by Hull. Despite the decline of Bradford there has been very little movement at the top of the game.

The only way that all the clubs in Super League can be raised to the required standard would be to concentrate the TV money in 10 franchised clubs which would have a secure income and could invest for the future.

The introduction of promotion and relegation is a retrograde step which if anything will merely increase the dominance of the big three or four clubs as the medium and smaller sized clubs will have to adopt a short term mentality to avoid relegation and won't have security to build for the future. It is what happens in soccer and Rugby Union and such structural inequality can only be overcome by a huge injection of external finance, something which is severely limited by the salary cap.

In terms of Super League you are wrong about the top clubs not remaining at the top. Of the 30 finalists in the 15 Grand Finals all but two have come from St Helens, Wigan, Leeds and Bradford. One appearance by Warrington and one appearance by Hull. Despite the decline of Bradford there has been very little movement at the top of the game.

You quite rightly point out the monopoly from a handful of clubs on the SL era trophies and finals but my response was to your comment that the top six or seven teams should kick the dead wood out of SL. Who are the other teams that have never contested a final in the SL era that you feel have the right to decide on the future of other clubs? Those same teams who only several years ago were in the same position as the clubs whose fate you have decided by when the axe is swung rather than any detailed consideration. What if the SL had come along in the late seventies when Wigan were in decline. Would you have happily axed the biggest name in RL simply because they were poor at the wrong time in history?

Clubs that have the possibility of sustaining a Super League club to the required standard. Wigan, St Helens, Warrington, Leeds, Hull, Catalans, Bradford, Huddersfield should be considered the core sides. The other two would be dependent on circumstances. Basically those with the support of a large fan base and or the wealth of a benefactor.

Anyway the clubs who would make up the 10 wouldn't be fixed just as the membership of the NRL and NSWRL has never been fixed. If Wigan, or Bradford for that matter, were in a continual shambles they should be kicked out of the competition too.

The real problem with the RFL shuffling the deck chairs and bringing back promotion and relegation is that those in power are refusing to make the tough decisions required. Those tough decisions by their nature mean telling most clubs they aren't cut out for full time professionalism unless they can prove otherwise. Licensing was the right idea but the RFL implemented it horribly and compromised the concept by expanding the top division to 14 so that historic clubs weren't excluded.

Until the tough decisions are made top division Rugby League will continue to struggle on and off the pitch.

Well if we are dealing in absolutes you are wrong about the NSWRL. Before Super League the NSWRL had already expanded to Newcastle, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, Auckland, Gold Coast, North Queensland and South Queensland by 1996.

Aside from Perth (which was dropped just as quickly as any British attempt at expansion), all of those areas had existing regional leagues that had become increasingly dwarfed by the NSWRL. Comparing British RL to Australian RL, especially with expansion is like comparing apples to oranges.

After the Super League War the need for the NRL to rationalise was accepted in principle by the ARL and News Corps. 7 of the traditional Sydney teams either agreed to merge or stripped of First Grade status. That was a course of action that was endorsed by the ARL and by extension its member clubs. Perth, Adelaide and South Queensland were victims of financial mismanagement and the desire for News Corps to get the Melbourne Storm in the competition more than anything. The rationalisation process affected both the ARL and Super League clubs.

Can you imagine 6 of the small heartland clubs in England agreeing to merge for the greater good? Not in a month of Sundays.

Let's just ignore the fact that there was a Super League War in the first place. You seem to completely miss the point that the War was fought purely because of what you would class as parochialism. If the Aussie clubs were so noble and forward thinking, there would have been no war in the first place!

None of those clubs merged for the greater good and there is a good argument that with all the mergers it just led to the demise of one of the clubs. Wests tigers are more Balmain, St George-Illawarra are basically St George and Manly squeezed out the North Sydney Bears.

Our game has made tough decisions too that have affected many smaller clubs.

Also you are wrong about the BRL too. Up until the creation of the Broncos BRL players were still being picked for the Kangaroos in significant numbers. The creation of the Canberra Raiders, who relied heavily on BRL talent, and then the Broncos killed the BRL as a first grade competition. Within a couple of years the crowds, sponsorship and quality of the players had collapsed.

My point was correct. You are trying to make out like the noble BRL clubs sacrificed themselves for the greater good by becoming a feeder competition. They didn't. Their decline was precipitated by the growth of the NSWRL, they basically lost out to a bigger partner which killed off the competition's prestige. That's like making out that Leigh, Halifax and Featherstone have nobly stepped by so that Super League can be a success.

Also getting back to the original topic the NSWRL clubs also allowed the State of Origin to be created and allowed their players to be used in the games.

The Australian game and the Australian clubs have been much more dynamic and forward thinking than their British counterparts.

Back to the original point, there has been a yearly series between Queensland and NSW since 1910. Not as long as we've had Roses clashes mind. They didn't decide to release their players for the greater good, they had always done it. They just changed which side they had to play for. By the time Arthur Beetson got to play for Queensland in a modern style Origin, he had already played 18 games for NSW.

It's laughable to claim that Australia are more forward thinking than us. They took the dollar just as much, if not more than we did in 1995.

We face regular reluctance from them over a number of things that would help the international game. They let their international players have a year off last year, what other sports do this? Our clubs would take part in an extended WCC in a heartbeat, it is they who see no value in it. They shortened the Ashes tours into just a 3 game series. There are many more instance where their reluctance causes considerable problems.